Common Core still moving ahead in Florida

In recent weeks, Florida has backed away from its plan to use the new statewide exam that many believed would accompany the incoming Common Core State Standards.

And just this week, the state signaled that school districts aren’t required to use reading samples and student-writing samples that came with the new standards. However, the public should not view these moves as Florida wavering on intention to roll out Common Core, some say.

“I don’t see the state board or the commissioner or the Legislature backing off from Common Core,” St. Johns County Superintendent Joseph Joyner said.

Many following Florida education felt the state would use the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC exam, to replace the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test in 2014-15. Instead, the state decided to open a bid process to find a new exam to be the statewide assessment. Stepping away from PARCC, combined with the state board’s sample materials vote on Tuesday, could be seen as weakening the standards.

Some believe that recent decisions associated with Common Core stem from pressure that Gov. Rick Scott has received from fellow Republicans.

In September, Scott ordered the state education board to back away from PARCC. Two months prior, Florida Senate President Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, and Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, wrote a letter to then-education commissioner Tony Bennett expressing concerns about the exam.

“To date, the cost of the full implementation of PARCC assessment materials is indeterminate, let alone the costs for the technology and professional development infrastructure necessary to effectively administer a valid assessment program,” the lawmakers wrote.

On the day Scott made the executive order, Weatherford issue a statement saying, “I applaud Gov. Scott for taking decisive and bold action to affirm Florida’s constitutional role in education.”

Whether politics are involved or not, an official with the state education department echoed Joyner’s thoughts and said Common Core is here to stay.

Cheryl Etters, spokeswoman for Florida’s education department, said the public should not view the moves as Florida shying away from Common Core. The suggested samples were always up to districts to use or not and Florida adopted the standards in 2010 with no intentions of reversing, Etters said.

Education standards vary from state to state, but in general they are a precise list of skills and knowledge that students should have mastered by the end of each grade in K-12. In many cases, schools and teachers are held accountable for a student’s failure to meet the standards.

The Common Core standards, which were developed by the National Governors Association and approved in 45 states, including Florida, and the District of Columbia, came from a large consensus of educators who felt students needed to be better prepared for college courses or professional work.

Although many Florida teachers have begun teaching the standards in kindergarten through second grade, Common Core will fully replace the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards in 2014-15.

Some of the optional reading samples districts can use include the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address and the Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr. Joyner said those were great sample materials that St. Johns teachers will use.

The flexibility to use the reading and writing samples boils down to districts keeping control of which curriculum to use. While Common Core will lay out what standards students must learn, districts can use whatever curriculum — teaching materials, lesson plans, textbooks, pacing guides — that local administrators deem fit.

Jason Rose, data and research director at the Jacksonville Public Education Fund, said the tone from state education leaders is that they’re committed to implementing Common Core, “because they think it’s the right thing to do for students.”

Rose said it was a good decision for state education leaders to rethink PARCC if they felt the exam would not be ready for 2014-15. Joyner added that the state backed away because there were concerns about the length of the test and whether there was a paper-and-pencil option for administering the exam.

Tuesday’s vote on the sample materials, Rose said, just affirmed in statute that districts had an option.

Plenty of parochial, private, and home consortia schools for parents who prefer to avoid the one test education of government schools. And anyone who tells you public schools are not teaching to the test is simply lying.

If Florida does not give the same assessments that are used everywhere else, there will be no way to compare the performance of Florida's students with that of students from other states. This will allow the continued manipulation and exaggeration of results to support privatization of education.